It's That Time Again--Random Gilbert Poem

A Song of Defeat

The line breaks and the guns go under,
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain;
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder,
And the whole of my heart grows young again.
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle,
As once in my life they throbbed and reeled;
I have found my youth in the lost battle,
I have found my heart on the battlefield.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We are not easy in victory:
We have known each other too long, my brother,
And fought each other, the world and we.

And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our names in print.
For so they conquered and so we scattered,
When the Devil road and his dogs smelt gold,
And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;
When I was twenty and odd years old.
When the mongrel men that the market classes
Had slimy hands upon England's rod,
And sword in hand upon Afric's passes
Her last Republic cried to God.
For the men no lords can buy or sell,
They sit not easy when all goes well,
They have said to each other what naught can smother,
They have seen each other, our souls and hell.

It is all as of old, the empty clangour,
The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page,
The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
Painfully paints his face with rage.
And the faith of the poor is faint and partial,
And the pride of the rich is all for sale,
And the chosen heralds of England's Marshal
Are the sandwich-men of the Daily Mail,
And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,
And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,
So while the City of Toil is gutted,
I sit in the saddle and sing my song.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We have no comfort in victory;
We have read each other as Cain his brother,
We know each other, these slaves and we.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

On the Lamentable Decline of Reasonable Discourse among Our Moste Publick Personages

Just read a rather interesting article about the new Pullman movies. Interesting, that is, in its rather bizarre presuppositions. And by interesting, I mean depressing.

The first interesting quote comes halfway through the second paragraph. "Unfortunately for the filmmakers, Pullman's books also include a fair amount of what has been perceived to be anti-Catholic rhetoric."

Which, despite the pejorative nature of the term "rhetoric" (implying name-calling rather than a fully-defined argument), is a pretty big understatement. At the moment, I've only read the first two books, but it seems to me Pullman takes a central and uncompromising stance in which any religion calling for "humility and submission" is, not to put to fine a point on it, wrong and evil. In interviews, Pullman takes pains to point out that this doesn't make him a moral relativist, as he very much believes in and is interested in the idea of right vs. wrong. He just thinks Christianity (and any similar religion) is on the side of wrong, philosophically speaking, even if many Christians may honestly do very good things. And he likes to focus on the many times they do bad things, for obvious reasons.

Or, to allow Pullman his own way of putting it:

Underlying the trilogy there is a myth of creation and rebellion, of development and strife, and so on. I don’t make this myth explicit anywhere, but it was important for me to have it clear in my mind. It depicts a struggle: the old forces of control and ritual and authority, the forces which have been embodied throughout human history in such phenomena as the Inquisition, the witch-trials, the burning of heretics, and which are still strong today in the regions of the world where religious zealots of any faith have power, are on one side; and the forces that fight against them have as their guiding principle an idea which is summed up in the words The Republic of Heaven. It’s the Kingdom against the Republic.

And everything follows from that. So, for instance, the book depicts the Temptation and Fall not as the source of all woe and misery, as in traditional Christian teaching, but as the beginning of true human freedom – something to be celebrated, not lamented. And the Tempter is not an evil being like Satan, prompted by malice and envy, but a figure who might stand for Wisdom.

Now there are a number of directions that it is possible to go with these revelations. I suppose one traditional response throughout Christianity would be to label the book as "dangerous" and censor it. Which works really, really great, because we live in a theocracy and have expunged all people who disagree with us and therefore all that is necessary for order is for everyone to agree word-for-word with the dictum of those in our religion who are best at attaining earthly power. And of course burn the witches, because there's nothing that makes the righteous feel ... er ... righteous quite like killing those who aren't righteous.

There's also the secular humanist equivalent: go see the movie, read the book, &c., because it tells the truth about the evils of Christianity uncompromisingly. I mean, how can we ever establish a world where every human is treated with value if we allow big groups of people to run around saying that man is made in the image of an immeasurably powerful God? And how can we live up to the humanist beliefs started by people like Erasmus of Rotterdam and fed by the intellectual conviction of people like Martin Luther if we allow there to be religion? It simply isn't possible: man must be God Himself. And then, whenever a man has absolute power, he will of course naturally be a benevolent and virtuous creature, just like God isn't.

Then there's the more reasonable take: Pullman is continuing in the tradition of C.S. Lewis (whose Narnia books he despises) in crafting a fantasy that's concerned far more with ethics, morality, and religion than with mere striking images (although neither author is lacking in beautiful images). It may (or may not) be reasonable for those in one camp to wish to avert their children from emotional damage of facing a violent attack on their fundamental beliefs before they have the critical capability to analyze arguments--certainly there is a good deal of emotional-scar-potential in both "the problem of Susan" and Pullman's God-as-villain. But the "other side" cannot in a diverse culture be avoided forever--sooner or later the collision will occur, and the individual must choose one side or another. And even then, one will have to live, work, talk to, and vote with many whose fundamental beliefs are contrary to one's own. So there needs to be an allowance for debate.

(Incidentally, Lewis himself would be on the rather liberal side of this view: not only did he highly value the "second friend" defined roughly as "that guy you disagree with about everything, and with whom you're constantly enjoying rousing debates," but in Surprised by Joy he takes pains to point out that he was allowed free range of his parents' library (including books almost universally kept away from children), and that it didn't seem to do him any lasting harm. Being taught that he must "truly believe" the things he prayed, on the other hand, did. It is perhaps this honesty and friendship with debate that makes Pullman admit that "the things Lewis said as a critic" are "very acute and full of sense and full of intelligent nad sometimes subtle judgments.")

And finally....there's Nicole Kidman's view of the subject:

"It has been watered down a little...I was raised Catholic, the Catholic Church is part of my essence," Kidman said.

"I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic."


By all that is sane and reasonable....what in the world ARE they teaching those kids in school these days?

What's In a (Street) Name

Halfway between the University of Toronto and Chinatown, Hannah and I stumbled upon the following road:

As a huge fan of cheesy SF adventures, English novels of manners, and utterly bizzare combinations, I have to admit that this sign is the greatest road sign since Shades of Death Road.

It refers, of course, to Vxy'cutular'varen D'arcy XXIV, the stern but surprisingly just Glorious Conqueror of a Thousand Worlds, who was nevertheless smitten upon the 3472nd year of his reign with love for the perspicacious, energetic, and exceptionally free-willed second daughter (Elizabeth) of Reg ulation Cooridnator Bennett. The whole affair became the number one gossip topic among Intergalactic Society when the woman responded to D'arcy's order to "accept the role of my wife with all the dignity, obedience, and servitude the position requires." Against all the power and intensity of the Unopposed Conquerer Elizabeth merely calmly admitted to "a great number of reservations and misgivings concerning the character of your race, your person, and your manner of proposal," but according to the closest sources the largest objection remained unsaid: on the night of their first meeting, Elizabeth had overheard D'arcy describing her in no unclear terms as "a puny Earthling," an insult, all must agree, worthy of giving the most besotted woman grounds for anger.

In the end, however, the wedding did occur--though again accounts differ as to the specific reasons behind the earthling's reversal of opinion. Most of those that gave the area any serious thought concluded that it had something to do with her younger sister's marriage to the dashing but amoral Bua'ingl'fey, formerly commander of D'arcy's personal guards. In any case, all events remain so shrouded in secrecy that any theorized connection remains little more than idle guesswork.....

The Reading Update

In some ways, the fact that most of my library is in Texas while I'm in Toronto has actually been a good thing for my reading habits.  That is, I've been by necessity forced to (1) read those of my wife's favorite books that I hadn't gotten around to reading, (2) make use of the library, and (3) the few gems we've already picked up at Bakka Phoenix.  Two books particularly stand out.

1)  Deerskin, by Robin McKinley.  Robin McKinley is now, by far, the best author I discovered over the course of the last year, and one of the greatest living fantasy authors period.  Already her Sunshine is on the very short list of Truly Great Books I've Read This Year, and so I figured it was time to check out Deerskin, the only McKinley book we have that I hadn't read.

My first thought:  Deerskin is the book for anyone who thinks fairy tales are lighthearted, pretty, and pleasantly childish.  Deerskin is, in fact, quite the opposite--a thick and unflinchingly dark novel full of atmosphere, personality and detail.  But other than the relatively large number of words, it has everything that could be asked for in a fairy-tale: great deeds of momentous import; a sense of real, clear, hideous evil (that is climatically defeated); a world far more in touch with nature than ours; magical shelters; a fairy-godmother (of sorts); the Handsome (well...immensely likable, which in a book is far more important) Prince; tear-jerking moments of humanity and relief and divine intervention; and a love story to warm the heart and soul.  It just happens to be centered around, er, incest and rape at the hands of a beloved king.

Deerskin is also one of those books that I have a hard time praising, simply because it treads so confidently and earnestly in a direction that is, as far as I can tell, unique to the story.  It's not that the darkness of the storyline is necessarily so original; fantasy was eagerly delving the depths of human depravity long before a stodgy Oxford don found a blank essay sheet and scribbled "in a hole in a hill there lived a hobbit."  It's that McKinley embraces all the darkness of her subject matter, and then writes a happy, warm, humorous and incredibly human fairy-tale about friendship, redemption, and the cute difficulties of raising orphaned puppies (no, I'm not making this up.)  All that, but without flinching away from the damage, in the kind of world where it is a magical and wondrous thing for a girl to be allowed to forget her entire childhood and adolescence.  And McKinley writes the whole thing with such conviction that it seems there isn't any difficulty reconciling the two, that heartbreaking stories about rape should naturally involve princes that sleep in the barn and have a near phobia of balls, or that such stories should dedicate pages to the cute peril of puppies with newly-opened eyes and sharp "needle-like teeth." 

And then there are the moments of true fantasy, which is probably a sensation harder to describe than even compassionate horror or the warm and human narration.  But it's there, showing at the surface in vivid detail when appropriate, staying close at hand in the background throughout the tale.  And in the end, we are thrown back into the realm of faerie violently enough (if a bit too briefly) to please any fantasy-lover--not just happily ever after, but bloody spells, operatic passions, single-minded desperation, and the struggle (writ large) of sanity against the very real threat of deadening madness. 

It doesn't quite achieve the perfection of tone that made Sunshine so remarkable, and every once in a while the physical horror seems to counteract the calm compassion McKinley otherwise carefully builds up.  But it remains one of the best fantasies I have ever read, a dark and slanty-eyed tribute to the power and beauty that most beloved of fantasy genres.


2)  The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch.

If Deerskin is the book for anyone who thinks fairy-tales too airy and lighthearted, The Lies of Locke Lamora is the book for those who think that the term "escapist" implies a lack of intelligence or skill.  The book is unabashedly escapist, blatantly irresponsible, and shamelessly fun.  On the first page, the eight-year-old protagonist is sold by the Thief-maker of Camorr, for the simple reason that he steals too much and schemes too big to be allowed to remain in the school of thievery and schemes.  He then joins the Gentleman Bastards, a merry band of men who rob from the rich and, er, pile the gold in their basement (only after their success realizing that it's actually easier to steal money than to spend it.)  The story is fun, the characters absolutely lovable (if utterly roguish) in the old Errol Flynn style.  Better yet, the adventure (and oh is there adventure) hearkens back entirely to the time before everyone wanted to be a movie star.  It's swashbuckling fantasy, but not of the guy-with-sword-killing-hordes variety.  Locke Lamora himself is, it turns out, not a gifted fighter in the least--but he was born to lie, charm, and shake the world with his outrageous schemes. 

And, of course, the whole thing is written with a wit and vigor reminiscent of Wodehouse.  It's the most fun I've had with a book for quite some time, and I'm only half way through.  Better yet, I've been informed by a reliable source that the sequel involves (what else?) pirates.



Curious Sidenote 1:
I think I've made myself something of a connoisseur of really bad back covers for fantasy novels.  Deerskin, despite the three great quotes from fellow fantasy authors, has one of the worst.  Clearly, the person who wrote the text had neither read Deerskin, nor read a summary, but merely heard someone talk about the summary that they remembered reading sometime. 

"As Princess Lissar reaches womanhood, it is clear to all the kingdom that in her breathtaking beauty she is the mirror image of her mother, the queen."  (The book goes out of its way to point out that, despite resembling her mother, she constantly shocks the court with her bad manners and inelegance, so that they wonder how she can be the queen's daughter!)  "But this seeming blessing forces her to flee for safety from her father's wrath."  (Well...I have to give credit for the creative euphemism, I guess...but then comes the real kicker:)

"With her loyal dog Ash at her side, Lissar unlocks a door to a world of magic, where she finds the key to her survival--and an adventure beyond her wildest dreams..."  (How can I begin to complain!  First of all, it's rather a strong symbol in the book that Lissar never, in the entire book, is described as unlocking a door.  And when you're talking about Robin McKinley, whose first thought about an exciting adventure is "when and where are these people going to eat, sleep, and use the restroom", that says a lot.  Moreover, there is actually quite a bit of prose (with rather obvious literal and symbolic meaning) in the first act in which we see in detail exactly how Lyssa locks doors, where the keyholes are, and which way the doors will swing if they are opened etc.  But I suppose we shouldn't expect people who write summaries of books to actually read the book they summarize--as Chesterton pointed out, books do tend to have lots of words, and that means lots of work for the poor editor.

But even if keys and doors and locks had never been mentioned--do people really want drab copies of Narnia so much that every story has to involve a "door to a world of magic," even when the girl lives inside a fairy-tale?  Sheesh.)

But here's the true kicker:  The front cover illustration (also probably written by someone who never read the book) captures the soul of the book perfectly.  The moral: sometimes it's okay to judge a book by its cover--but only it's front cover, never the back.

Curious Sidenote 2:
Locke Lomora is, generally speaking, not a man all that concerned with ethics, or aesthetics, or philosophy, or basically anything except palling around with his friends and pulling off brilliant capers.  So I find it very interesting that he is, perhaps, the only character in his genre to be faithfully in love with just one woman.  I mean we're talking about a genre where the most idealized men of justice and truth are assumed to seduce every woman in sight, just to prove that they're cool and suave, and even if the girl recently slept with their father played by Sean Connery.  I always found that aspect a rather disconcerting theme.  But it's interesting that the first exception is possibly the most immoral of the bunch.

Honesty and Morality in Fiction--Or If You Can't Write Fiction, Write About Writing Fiction

I believe that one of the fundamental elements in fiction is morality. Not that "one of the fundamental elements in fiction ought to be morality," not that "one of the fundamental elements in Christian fiction is morality," not even that "one of the fundamental elements in good fiction is morality." Humans are driven to tell stories, and while we all like clever stories, and we all like funny stories, the parts of stories that actually mean something to us are always about morality. Oedipus is driven to justice, blind to his own guilt. Huck Finn decides that he'll help free a nigger, even if it means he'll go to hell for it. Luke declares that there is some (moral) good in Vader, but goes into a killing frenzy when his thoughts betray his sister. Lancelot violates his king's trust, but only because he follows the rival moral system of Courtly Love (well, until he sleeps with the two Elaines). The list goes on.

Of course, the list also proves another thing: morality in stories is not necessarily easy, comforting, or consistent with other stories. Often, the very opposite is true. Chaucer hears a moralist's inhuman allegory, turns around, and writes a story about a greedy Pardoner who preaches chilling tells of how "radix malorum est cupiditas." Neoclassical authors assert order and reason and submission; Romantics idealize the "natural" and "primitive" and rebellious. And so it goes.

In a sense, I guess one could say that much of postmodern art is just such a reaction, although one focused almost exclusively on destroying previous "illusions" rather than presenting any coherent alternative. The Western For a Few Dollars More starts with an image of a man getting shot off a horse--in isolation it means nothing, but it's darkly humorous merely because in the moral universe of Westerns, the lone rider is virtually always an image of rough-and-tumble moral goodness, as well as the protagonist. By killing him, Sergio Leone is in essence arguing that all moral codes are senseless, that our most edifying myths are errant.

But I digress. The point is, even when attacking "traditional morality" and attempting to destabilize the viewer, fiction retains an inherent moral focus--if only by emphasizing morality's absence. Which brings me to the sentence I once wrote, which brought such interesting questions to my mind it inspired this whole posting.

"At last he told me of myself�the beloved daughter he never could have but in whom he saw and loved so much of himself."

The line came to me rather unbidden, which is (alas!) rather a rarity for me in the course of writing. It occurs at the end of a story that serves largely as a contemplation of love, or at least of the brokenness and fragmentation of love in a fallen world, where sin touches on everyone and on my protagonists more strongly than many. Yet out of an abyss largely made of desperate sexuality and fearfully ambiguous puritanism, at the end, a sort of promise of healing comes in a friendship between a failed father and a girl whose own father felt it reasonable to lock her in a tower until she was old enough to be given away*. The ending felt right, retaining the honesty of the darkness that had gone before while depositing a real glimmer of hope, heard in the ever-sweeping roar of the sea and the equally peaceful and steady love born of sin, suffering and compassion. And then I wrote the sentence.

"...but in whom he saw and loved so much of himself." Now the line, as I said, came to me, and I was struck with its unexpected beauty just as if I had been reading it in someone else's book. (In fact, it's experiences like this that convince me of the sheer idiocy of the contemporary idea that an author somehow "owns" the ideas he happens to set down in ink.) In a very real sense he sees his failures as echoed in the girl, and if it feels natural to love and forgive her (who looks like him), maybe he can accept forgiveness for his more momentous mistakes. At the same time, the instant I wrote the last word, I was struck by the bite at the end, and instinctively tried to rephrase it. "But who he loved as his daughter reborn" simply didn't work, but any variant of "whom he loved saw past the failures and sins of an irresponsible life" seemed so cloying and patronizingly moralistic as to destroy any value the story might have.

But my problem remained. Because if "he saw and loved so much of himself," does that not mean that he is self-focused, and unable to see the girl herself but only a younger form of himself? What does it say about his love for his daughter, who despite the paternity in fact had very little in common with him, and never experienced the grief that came to dominate his life. Am I, in fact, implying that love never really leaves the self, that our feelings towards others are really nothing more than a slight twist on our own self-love?

And then I made a realization. I'm not responsible for what other people might think as a result of my stories. It was an honest line, and the only proper line to fit in that particular place in the story, and the impulse is a real fact of human life. The more I thought of it, I realized two things. First, that it made sense within the framework of a lot of what I believe to be true and beautiful about the world, that maybe it wasn't as fearsome a starting place as it might first appear. But more importantly, it was what I thought should go there, and if I ever want to get any writing done, I'm going to have to write what I feel and see, as an author and observer and poet, and forget for a while the Spanish Inquisition in my head asking what might be the consequences of pointing out this fact as opposed to, say, that fact.

After all, there's a reason why the study of literature is classed under the heading of "humanities." For writing a story is a very human action, an intuitive joining of emotion and thought that doesn't really follow strict reason. And if I don't write fiction as a human, with the courage to put on paper potential errors as well as my insights, then I will have neither errors nor insights but drab, lifeless illustrations of conceptual theology. And really, in the end, it should always be up to the reader to decide what my observation means, based on his or her experiences and beliefs which will by definition differ from mine. My only duty is to see what I see, and try to point using whatever vagaries of words I can to the beauties and intricacies that fill every corner of our lives.


*It's okay, though, because the book is vaguely Medieval in setting. So it's cultural, just like Indians wearing headdresses or Russians dancing with bottles of beer on their head.